


If All the Statues of the World (Would Turn to Flesh, with Teeth of Pearl)

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Post-Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You feel like your life could have ended that April, like you weren't just locked in a house with old Aunt Muriel, but locked inside yourself as well. Kept to wither slowly, to age and fade away and to be forgotten. But you can't forget, and you can't move on, and there's no one to help you cross the threshold out of that house, out of this cage of your own body.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Ginny's stuck and Harry's in love. Maybe together they can make something out of this mess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If All the Statues of the World (Would Turn to Flesh, with Teeth of Pearl)

_The war ends, and your Mum saves you from uncertain death._

_You go through the motions the entire day, recovering the dead, mourning appropriately, hugging those who made it out alive. And you keep thinking of that ray of green light narrowly avoiding your face, the way it was a split second away before Bellatrix just--missed._

_You wonder if perhaps she didn't, after all, because you feel more than a bit like a ghost._

 

 

 

 

Ginny doesn't even turn around when he touches her shoulder, and he supposes that's the second big sign that something is wrong.

The first sign being the fact that it's almost midnight and she's still standing on a grassy patch of ground overlooking the lake, staring up at the stars and saying nothing.

"Hey," Harry says, and tries not to move his hand through the curling ends of her hair, "It's late. Aren't you knackered?"

Ginny turns her chin slightly to peek over her shoulder. It's the first time Harry has properly spoken to her since outside the Room of Requirement, and without the dire urgency of an imminent battle humming through her skin and the brown of her eyes, she looks dimmer, darker. More stark against the landscape of the black lake beyond her. He doesn't care, though. He drinks his fill of her image, the outline of her face swimming in the shadows.

Her laughter is soft when she answers, but brittle. "Haven't you got anything else to take care of right now, Harry?" she asks. "Like, I dunno, now that you've killed the scourge of the wizarding world, don't you want to sleep?"

He considers her profile for a moment, the sloping downturn of her nose, the fan of her lashes. "Nah," he says abruptly, brightly. "After all, that's sort of the point of this whole thing. I can finally do what I want, even if that means...well, nothing." He pauses, sheepish. "Besides, I've slept all day, feels like. From dawn till supper, at least. I could get used to the idle life, but my bum was going a bit numb."

Ginny arches a brow. "So you came out here to get the blood moving, is that it?"

Harry shrugs, grin sliding across his face. "Sounded right at the time, yeah."

Ginny snorts, and finally turns to face him fully. The wind lifts her hair in a blazing halo around her head, strands moving sleepily in the breeze. She wears a heavy cloak despite the warm weather, and her skin is so pale she seems ghostly in the moonlight. Her eyes are wide, wet.

Harry moves forward, tries to speak. Can't find any words around the thought of how much he's missed her.

"I looked for you all evening, before I thought of the map," he finally says. _I'd know your dot anywhere,_ is what he wants to say, but doesn't because that would be rather creepy and he thinks it'd be poor form to admit a little light stalking. He's always been rubbish at words anyway, so all he continues with is, "Couldn't find you till now, though."

Ginny moves her shoulders. "Didn't want to be found," she sighs, answers his unspoken question. Her eyes search the skies again. "Looking for something, I suppose."

Harry lets his hand brush her hair then, and he breathes in the smoky, flowery smell. There's a stillness to her features that he's never seen before, and it strikes him that this is the first time in a long while that he can't see his own image in the reflection of her eyes. He wonders what secrets this year has given her to keep from him, what secrets she has that she will share. He asks, "What were you looking for?"

Ginny's lips kick up in a faraway smile. "Oh, answers," she says vaguely. "Don't think I got as far as asking the right questions, though." Her fingers twist in her cloak. "Everything's all topsy-turvy, Harry. It's like, life is just starting again now. We're all meant to start fresh, but I don't know how. Not when there's so much left to finish first, see?"

Harry tilts his head and thinks of everyone who's gone, everything that's been lost. "Yeah," he says heavily. "Yeah, I do." Ginny's gaze on his, altogether familiar and forever changed, is like a punch to the gut. "But," Harry says, more earnest than he has ever been, "You don't have to do the remembering alone. You're not alone. Not. Well. Not unless you want to be."

Ginny's grin is slow, and wry, but real. "You've just got a thing for damsels in distress," she says. "You have a saving-damsels-in-distress complex, you do."

Harry snorts. "You're not a damsel," he says firmly. He reaches for her hand, but curls his fingers around empty air.

"No, Harry, I'm not," Ginny says, calmly. Evenly. Her eyes are kind now, face sympathetic, but she turns back to the sky with an air of hastily-recalled dignity, her jaw trembling as she determinedly searches the stars.

Harry feels bereft, and not a little thwarted, but stays by her side for another half-hour before touching her hair again, at a loss. "Whenever you want to talk," he says helplessly, "Or just be with someone, I'm here. I haven't got anywhere else I'd rather be, and all the time in the world, now. So. Take the time you need."

He doesn't know what else to say, to make her look at him, to break this new, impenetrable shell from around her small body. He gives her space, instead, thinking that tomorrow will be a new day and she'll come around. She's got to, because they've spent their whole time together on divergent paths, him facing a different, looming future than hers. Now, when everything's over and he can finally walk _with_ her instead of ahead of her, now...

Now, like before, it seems they're doomed to be on different pages.

She doesn't turn to watch him when he goes.

 

 

 

_  
There's a fear here that hasn't quite disappeared, you can feel it in your pores._

_Hogwarts stands still smouldering, still smoking, and the remembered blood and grime and sweat conspire on your skin to say: once upon a time there was a boy who became a man and that man killed a man who used to be a boy before he became a monster. The circularity of their story has always made you shiver, because your own place is right in the middle, a princess to one and a pawn to the other._

_You pass your hand over the curve of your elbow, thinking that nothing is safe. One wrong turn, one wronged word, and villains are born. Heroes made. And the thing of it is, life isn't exactly the fairytale it always seems. There's no happily-ever-after in the offing; for whatever might be ending, there are a thousand other possible beginnings that have yet to take root, and frankly, you're scared of what's to come._

_You could set quill to parchment once more, only this time you'd have power over your own fate, the ability to rewrite the way your own life is to go. There is no stranger in a diary this time, and you are not eleven years old. The freedom should thrill you._

_Instead, you open your gaze slowly to the sound of owls in the night. For a moment, you think about broken things. Harry's body lying limp in Hagrid's arms, Remus and Tonks stretched out so silent and small, Fred looking for all the world like he'd wake up any second--all of this is so strangely opposite to the heartbeat drumming out its rhythm in your chest right now, the inexplicable happiness at just being alive zipping under your skin. There was a killing curse inches from your head and you saw your life filter in flashes before your eyes, and yes, you feel sorrow for all that's gone, but you also feel relief for all that's left. The conflict within you weighs on you like waves crashing over your head._

_Old stones slide home now by the dim glow of wandlight and perhaps tomorrow, this castle will be rebuilt into what it was. Instead of graveyards and last words, dying actions and epitaphs, perhaps tomorrow there will be flowers growing in the field. You can believe, you suppose. You can look to the sky and to all the broken people stumbling across the way, and you can believe. A spark sails from the north towers, and you pick the leaves from your hair._

_When you go to sleep, you know you will dream of the dead._

 

 

 

 

Ginny finds new ways to avoid him, in the days that follow Hogwarts, when they all finally go home.

Grimmauld Place is Harry's now, along with Kreacher and all the dusty, haunted corners of the looming mansion. He thinks that there's really no reason to stay there, however, not when there's another home that used to bursting at its seams and is now almost haunting in its emptiness. He packs the few meager possessions he has to call his own, and moves into the Burrow for the summer, cheerfully--if not comfortably--crammed into a corner of Ron's still ludicrously orange room.

And then he goes off in search of Ginny.

Harry knows this house like the back of his hand, like the grip of his wand. The floorboards that creak and the times at which the ghoul chooses to rattle his chains. He knows the ways the light slats in through the windows at any given moment of the afternoon, and he knows the direction in which the grass grows on the hills beyond the path leading to the front door. He knows the knobs on the wooden gate and the secret jiggle one must give the handle to get into the upstairs broom closet. He knows where childhood stories have taken place and where every Weasley sibling likes to go when they're trying to hide in a family of eight--no, now seven. He knows because in the days and weeks before he broke things off with her, Ginny would prop her chin atop her hand and lie with him by the lake, and in the shade of looming trees, she would fill in all the blanks of everything he'd ever wanted to know about the family who made him their own.

He supposes it stands to reason that she would leave some details out, though. Particularly the ones regarding her preferred solitary haunts.

"Your sister," Harry tells Ron, the fifth day they're home, the fifth day in a row that Ginny is lost to him, "keeps disappearing without a trace." Resignation weighs heavy in his voice.

Ron grins. "When she was about this high--" he puts his palm, face-down, right at knee-length, "Mum says she used to curl up into a ball and hide under the kitchen sink. Like a little bug. It's her way of avoiding things she doesn't want to do, you know--used to be chores and the like, but now it's more..." he trails off, goes solemn and still.

When Ron speaks again, his face is carved with a deepening grief that is wholly unsuited to him.

"Mate, we never see her. And when we do, she won't talk. Not about anything important, not about anything that matters. Mum's always crying these days, says when she looks at Ginny all she sees is something empty. And fuck it all if I don't agree. She won't laugh. She won't cry. Just watches, and walks, and sleeps. Like a shell." Ron's voice cracks. "I don't think this family can lose anything else to the bloody war, but we're losing her. Harry, she needs help."

There is a pause as Harry places a hand on Ron's shoulder, warmth bleeding through cotton. He wishes he didn't feel so helpless, wishes he knew what to say. But so much of loss is tied up in the personal memories, the sorrow and anger and guilt that is singular to the people who are left behind.

Even in the yellow glow of an early summer's day at the Burrow, it is hard to believe that Harry can be this happy, this content. But he has learned to compartmentalize and to remember his departed, one by one, as strength instead of sadness. Ginny, however, is another story.

In the year that has passed since Harry first broke up with her, Ginny has become someone he doesn't know.

(He wonders if this is because she has changed, or if it is because he has finally opened his eyes to a girl he never bothered to understand fully before.

He'd liked to think it's the former, but Harry knows, with the finely-honed instincts of a true prat, that it is most likely the latter.)

What keeps her so paralyzed now, Harry wonders. Is it nightmares? Is it regret? Dread, or bone-deep heartache? Whichever thing has taken root in her heart, there's only one answer:

"I'll help," Harry says, and though he hates making promises anymore, he's making one now. "I'll help her."

It's just, he supposes grimly, a matter of getting her to let him.

 

 

_  
_

_On the third week of May, they put your brother into the ground. You think it's fitting that he was one of the people who taught you anything was possible, if you had enough nerve. Because it seems that's all you've had this entire time, nerve and bravado to spare, but nothing--a bloody lot of nothing at all--to back it up._

_"I won't be locked in a cage," you used to breathe to yourself, watching from the tiny window of your room at old Aunt Muriel's. Over the hills, you knew, there was a war going on that you had every right to battle on your own. You feel like your life could have ended that April, like you weren't just locked in a house with your overprotective family and a spinster great aunt, but locked inside yourself as well. Kept to wither slowly, to age and fade away and to be forgotten. But you can't forget, and you can't move on, not till you cross the threshold out of that house, out of this cage of your own body._

_Sitting in the grass that grows wild and green on the hill overlooking Ottery St. Catchpole, you wish you had the strength to take the hands that have been offered to you in aid._

_Unwittingly, you think of Harry, and of hope, and of the terrible ways you could be pulled under by the rising happiness in your throat when you see his smile behind your eyes. He has done his utmost to keep you company these past weeks, and has in fact been invaluable to the collective sanity of your family, but you haven't been able to bring yourself to do anything but just sit with him. Because in the end, though Voldemort's bones have been crushed into the dirt, your fight is still unfinished. It's there in the everyday battles of everyday men, in the making do and the letting go. In the learning to live again._

_And it's something you think it's only fair that you do alone. Harry's already waged his war, after all. Isn't it your turn?  
_

 

 

 

 

"I wish," he tells Hermione, one day in the beginning of June, "That she would talk to me."

Hermione smiles, not unkindly. "You might try getting her to stay in a room with you for more than ten minutes, first," she suggests, and looks away quickly when he scowls. "Oh, honestly, Harry, it's not as if we haven't all tried speaking with her. But she's determined. She's...finding herself, I imagine. It's a delicate process."

"What d'you mean, finding herself?" he asks irritably. "She's right there." He is being deliberately obtuse, and they both know it, for Hermione only raises an eyebrow before sitting down next to him.

She takes his hand. "I suppose that's just another example of things getting lost in translation," she sighs. "Look, Harry. When a girl stays away from a boy, it means that she either finds him to be an idiot or she's perhaps going through something that has nothing to do with the boy himself. Do you understand?"

Harry blinks, and hopes Hermione hasn't just obliquely called him an idiot. "If I say no, will you hex me?" he asks, rather plaintively.

Hermione groans. "Harry, Ginny has spent so much of her life constructing this image of herself based in direct opposition of what others think of her. She's treated like an infant by her family, so she turns to rebellion. She's underestimated because of her size, so she trains herself to throw deadly hexes. She's been the youngest of a large family, one that's suffered very few losses till now, and always before all that people knew of her was that she was arse over teakettle for you."

Harry folds his arms. "So now?" he asks.

"So now," and Hermione's voice is gentle, "Now she has to learn how to live with tremendous holes in the fabric of everything she knew. And she must do it without relying on you."

Harry doesn't understand, and perhaps it shows on his face, because Hermione makes an encouraging motion with her hand.

"I just don't see how talking to me is going to make things worse. Can't they only help, seeing as I know how she feels?"

Hermione seems to think for a moment, then shakes her head. "You'd be surprised how difficult it is," she says. "Welcoming people in to see the weakest, newly-forming parts of you. When she was eleven years old, she let herself fall quite deeply for a handsome boy in a diary. I don't think Ginny ever wants to feel that vulnerable, ever again."

"And I think you're underestimating her." Harry's thinking now, thinking about the steel in Ginny's bones and the mulish protest that kicks up in his body at the prospect that she's better off alone. "I think she gets the same thing that I do, out of what we've got together. I think she's stronger for it, and happier. Being on your own isn't good, not when you lose someone..."

Harry trails off, and Hermione looks at him, patient as ever. He continues. "When you lose someone, you start to think in terms of what you were, either to them or with them or even just when they were alive. You don't think about who you could be, in the future. Or who you are now, in the moment, apart from the pieces that are missing. You need someone to remind you. To help you see." He scratches his ear. "If she wants time, Hermione, I can give her that. But I don't think I can give her space."

When he is finished, Hermione is looking at him with something like pride. "When did you grow up?" she asks, fond smile on her lips.

To be honest, Harry really doesn't know. He shoots her a wry grin. "Without all of Voldemort's thoughts in my head, I have more room for my own," he shrugs. "Maybe I'll skive off on the Auror exams and become an advice columnist, or a therapist or something."

Hermione shakes her head. "I'd rue the day," she says, and it's probably not a joke. He laughs anyway.

"I'll talk to her again," Hermione promises, squeezing Harry's hand. "I don't know if she's reached the same conclusions about herself as you, but I'll try, alright?"

Two days later, Ginny wanders outside as he is degnoming the garden, hands folded behind her back. Her posture is awkward still, and her hair falls in her eyes, but there's a smile at the edges of her mouth that is almost as soft as he remembers.

"Nice morning," she comments, the first words she's spoken to him in a long while.

"Beautiful," he comments, because all of a sudden, it really is.

 

 

 

 

_A month after Fred's funeral, you wake to a summer storm. The sky is still indigo, the moon fading out before the sun can pinken the horizon, and as thunder cracks in the distance, you sleepily watch the window melt into a mottled mess of black clouds and silver rain. Pale columns of light slant into the room with each flicker of lightning, and after a moment, you kick restlessly at the sheets twisted around his knees. Stretching, yawning, blinking blearily into the walls of your room, you push out of bed._

_The threadbare floor is rough beneath your feet, and you push your toes into the carpet as you curl your thumbs around the window latch, sliding the glass up and sucking in a sharp breath through your nose as a blast of cool air hits your skin. The breeze is heavy and moist, the air redolent of soil and rain. You cup your hands together, watching as the water pools in the cracks of your palm, running in thin streams between the slips of your fingers._

_Down below, the trees sway in the building wind, leaves spinning through the sky. The grass flattens as mud rises, puddles sparkling in the flickering glow of the fading moon. You are transfixed for a moment, watching the shimmering pool of rain sitting in the curve of your palms, soaking in the wild beauty of the weather outside._

_When you were younger, the twins used to help you steal into the broomshed on nights just like this one, and hoisting you over a broom two sizes too large for your slight frame, they used to fly you into the summer downpours, laughing as the water trickled through your hair and clung to your gloves, slipped down the blades of your back. You were skinny and small, but you were determined to make your brothers proud, and you clung to the crooked handles of those Cleansweeps with such tenacity, such wonder. Once, Fred and George taught you to fly through storms._

_Now Fred is lying in a grave and George is missing more than his ear, and here you stand at your window, every inch the quiet guard of a quiet heart that is somehow full of ghosts. Harry sleeps in Ron's room just a short distance away, and everything you have ever wanted waits just at the end of a road you only have to step onto. But you're not a child anymore, and bravery is so much more than stealing brooms and taking forbidden flights. You're still not sure that you even know how to move forward, after all that you've invested into the past. You're still not sure you even want to. Sometimes it's easier staying cocooned in a pain you know, rather than putting your toe, however tentatively, in a pool that could drown you without a second's notice._

_You spill the water from your hands and trace a dewy trail across the pane, beads of rain rolling down the siding like slow tears upon a stone wall._

_You watch the sun rise slowly in the sky, and your lips taste of salt.  
_

 

 

 

 

Harry thinks perhaps his pursuit of Ginny is a bit pathetic, but really, he can't be bothered to feel any shame.

More often than not, Ginny still only says one or two words, but Harry's starting to realize there's anything but a blank slate under her silence. Sometimes they sit in Ron's room for nothing other than the entertainment value of Hermione and Ron having a row, and though her eyes reflect inward, there is something clever about the quirk of her lips.

And rarer still, whenever his hand brushes hers, her fingers curls around his for just a second. With that single touch, barely a flicker but warmth and deliberate motion all the same, Harry knows Ginny is still with him.

Days turn into weeks, and then into a month, and soon, it is July. "My birthday, soon," he teases her, and though she gives teasing smiles in return, there is a vibrancy missing at the corners of her eyes. Coming back to herself is a process, then, increments and portions. No matter, Harry supposes. He can wait.

One day, they are weeding the garden, planting flowers in anticipation for Mrs. Weasley's imminent return from Shell Cottage. The sunlight catches Ginny's hair just so, and he grins at her without thinking, unable to restrain the wild happiness that tears through him at the sight of color rushing back into her faded lines.

She smiles back, a reflex, perhaps, but--there is brightness, and something bold. A flicker of fire in the turn of her lips, a joyful slant to her lashes. For a moment, and only a moment, she is more than she ever was, a possibility, a wisp, a prophecy, even. A promise from the future of what happiness could really look like.

At the stunned gape of Harry's mouth, she ducks her head, but after that, she is quicker to roll her eyes, to twist her face into expressive tableaus.

When Ginny inquires what he'd like for his birthday, Harry says the first thing that comes to mind. "Flowers." It is an immediate response, and though she is obviously startled, she dutifully asks what kind. "Oh, I dunno," he says evasively. "Any old kind..."

He sneaks a peek at her shampoo later that day, and tells her, "Gardenia. Definitely gardenias." Her blank look then narrowed eyes are enough to make him hastily wave and duck away, but it is a small price to pay to have something of hers without going around sniffing shampoo all day.

When July 31st comes, he sees a long, slender box by the side of his bed, and wonders how the hell he'll explain to Ron. He tears the package open, fully expecting stems and petals, but all he finds is a small, pink bottle of Flora Flunderhagen's Gardenia Spritzer, with a note:

"My favorite perfume. Don't think I've not seen your nose twitch."

Harry doesn't think he's ever blushed so hard in his life. He also feigns extreme ignorance when Ron asks why he smells like Ginny's laundry.

For her part, Ginny laughs for the first sharp, thunderbolt instant all summer, and for that...Harry thinks that it's been a good birthday, indeed.

 

 

 

 

_Eventually there comes the day when you finally wake from a fitful sleep, and the morning sun doesn't hurt your eyes in the way it usually does._

_You look out your window and you don't feel that aching wound of loss in your heart. Your first thought isn't of what will remind you of Fred or Tonks or even Colin Creevey today, but rather, something quite mundane: hunger. Your stomach growls loudly and very unexpectedly and you laugh, without any prior thoughts or a flash of guilt. It's just a hitch of your breath, a sigh, even. A giggle like air. But that lightness, the utter rightness of the laughter is so startling that you widen your eyes and laugh some more._

_You are still laughing when your Mum comes upstairs to see what the fuss is about. And when she tells you very sternly, but with her mouth set in a wobbly sort of pursed line that tells you she's holding back a giggle herself, "Ladies don't carry on like this so early in the morning," you let yourself go and howl, your shoulders shaking and your hands clutching your belly with the force of your hiccuping guffaws._

_Your mum's eyes are shining when you finally get ahold of yourself, and she asks, "Why are you so happy all of a sudden, then?" You can only shake your head, touching your lips like you can't believe they curved so willingly, so easily._

_"I dunno, Mum," you tell her, and the honesty surging through you is as much as relief as the sunshine flooding your room. "I just...am."_

_Of course later that day, when Harry touches your wrist at lunch and you send a fork spinning its way across the table, going very, very quiet, your Mum heaves a huff of exasperation and lost hope. But it's baby steps, you reason, letting your fingers deliberately brush his when he politely hands you back your utensil, firmly holding back any other unsightly bodily spasms. Baby steps._

_You spend the week taking walks in the afternoons with Harry by the pond near your home, talking animatedly with him all the while, and when your feet skim the surface of the water, you think that, really--_

_Jumping in doesn't look half-bad anymore._

 

 

 

 

It's the middle of August when another summer storm barrels through Ottery St. Catchpole. As the horizon melts into a slate grey and the clouds empty onto the hills, someone suggests a game of Quidditch. The family, never more obviously a pack of loons, is quick to agree, and soon five red-haired, boisterous men and one red-haired, beautiful girl are streaming into the back green, laughing into the rain.

Harry catches her just as they've boarded their brooms, hovering in air and waiting for the game to begin.

"So," he says, mud dripping from his shoes and the rain slicking his hair into his eyes, "We should date."

Ginny spins on her broom, on level with the swaying trees, looking small and windswept. "What, like--each other?" she asks, and moves her hand over the sodden mass of her own hair, quick fingers twisting the length into a loose braid.

Under the lopsided seat of the spectacles on his nose, Harry blinks. "Well," he begins, eyebrow raised, "yes, like each other."

Ginny considers him, gaze speculative. Water curves down her face in thin lines, droplets catching tremulously on her lashes and lips. "Right," she says after a stunned moment, shrugging. "Fine, then. Let's...date."

Harry squints, hands braced loosely around the crooked, swooping handle of his borrowed Cleansweep. Rain streams from the ends of the bent bristles.

Ginny waits, legs swinging in the air and the sky pouring down all around her.

"Be ready at seven?" he finally tries, gamely. In the columns of silver rain, his face is a mess of dark shadows and pale, wet skin. The smile he flashes is bright, uncertain.

"Sounds lovely," she responds, her own mouth twitching around a reluctant grin. "Now get ready to lose miserably."

Harry looks confused for a moment before a Bludger whizzes its way past his head. He ducks, his broom dipping wildly, and curses.

When he is upright again, Ginny laughs, a slow unfurling of tight shoulders and set jaw. "This isn't going to be easy as you thought," she warns, and her voice is not unsympathetic.

"You're not talking about Quidditch," Harry says more than asks, a sigh working its way up his chest.

Ginny gives him a speaking sort of glare, affection threaded through the sudden warmth that softens her cheeks, her chin, the lines around her eyes.

"If you want me," she says deliberately, heel kicking slightly, "you're going to have to catch me."

With a wink, she rears back and then shoots straight up in the air, flying higher and faster than he's ever seen her do. The crimson flag of her retreating braid is a beckon Harry can't refuse, and he takes off behind her, blankets of rain blurring their shapes as he chases her through the sky.

He catches the snitch in his fist just as he is grabbing for the thin circle of her wrist. The shape of the sphere warms in his hands, wings fluttering like a tiny little heartbeat, a fragmented glow in the gold reflection as water pools under it, running in streams through the cracks of his fingers. He smiles as he realizes that someone has released the snitch early. Technically, he's won the game before it's even started.

Then he feels another pair of hands curl over his own. Cold, small, slim. The brush of a thumb over his knuckles, the catch of gold in the mirror of her eyes. He looks at Ginny and she looks at him; for a second, he wonders whether this is a challenge or a compromise.

Harry gives her the snitch and she lets it drop, and they both watch as it disappears dizzily into the downpour.

"I don't think I want to play games after all, Harry," Ginny says, and in a sudden flash of lightning, her face is stark and set. "Seven o' clock, okay? I've missed you." Before she darts to the ground, she bites her lip and adds, "I'm sorry it took me so long to say it."

With those words, she is gone, and he's left staring after her as another strike of lightning cracks the sky wide open, illuminating his dark gaze and the rapidly emptying fields below.

 

 

 

_  
He takes you to dinner, and he forgets his wallet. His elbow knocks over the vase, and a candle almost catches the tablecloth on fire. His teeth bump yours and his specs go crooked when he moves in for a kiss._

_It is perfect._

_The rain keeps on falling, and you both are soaked to the skin by the time you Apparate home. Another kiss, chilled skin and hot tears at the back of your eyes, and for a very long moment, all you can think is:_

_So this is what it feels like to come alive._

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from Livejournal.


End file.
